LiberatedKnowledge Wiki:No Original Research
Original research is not allowed on LiberatedKnowledge. What Original Research is Some examples of original research include: *Personal experience and observations *Personal communication (for example emails, conversations or phone calls) *Fan theories *Experiments, interviews, surveys or other types of study that you have done that have not been published or that have been self-published. For example, on a blog or personal website. Why Original Research is not permitted * People using the encyclopedia need to be able to be able to find where the information came from. * It can be hard to differentiate original research from personal opinion. * Often, original research is done by people with little knowledge of research processes or the equipment needed to conduct high-quality research. Original research cannot be verified Research published in peer-reviewed journals and books must be redacted if data is falsified. Articles in newspapers also must be retracted if they contain inaccuracies. Both of these processes are independent of this encyclopedia. However, original research cannot be verified in the same way. If someone writes something based on their own research, there is no way to verify the accuracy of what has been written. This could lead to factual errors being included in the article. More seriously,editors could add libellous information about a person or organisation and claim that the information was based on their original research. Original research may be poorly conducted Academic research must meet strict standards before it is published. Journalism must also meet certain standards. Many people do not have the skills to either be journalist or an academic. Sometimes, people do not know how much they do not know. They do research which they think is the same standard as journalistic or academic research but is is not. Imagine you were writing an article on climate change. Consider which of these is more reliable: * An editor with an undergraduate degree in history reporting that they did a study on temperatures in their garden using an home weather station and recorded the temperatures for every day for two years which found that temperatures were going down. * A paper in a well-respected scientific journal on global temperatures where temperatures were collected for every hour of every day over a 10 year period using sophisticated equipment in multiple countries and in different terains where all the researchers have at least a master's degree in physics or a related subject, which found that global temperatures were rising. If you knew very little about research, you could think that both studies were equally good quality. However, there are many reasons why the latter study should be cited and the former study should not be cited. The data could be false. While both journalists and academics have been found to have falsified information, this is uncommon as it has serious professional consequences. On the other hand, an editor conducting their own research could create false data and the worst consequences they could face would be a permanent ban from editing. The equipment used might not be very good quality. If it were one or two degrees wrong every day, it would still give a broadly accurate reading which would provide enough information for an amateur user, but would not give a good representation of temperatures for the purposes of studying climate change. Category:LK Policy